This week we are down to a much smaller core for the AggroChat podcast with Thalen off exploring Japan and making us all jealous, and Grace needing to deal with some family stuff. The irony is there was a time when three members of the podcast was the norm but it is funny how much smaller the group feels when we are down a few now. For years I wondered if we would ever get used to recording with as big of a group as we often do... and I guess the answer to that is a resounding yes. As far as the show... this is yet another one of those "do we have anything to talk about?" episodes that ends up developing a life of its own.

This week we welcome back our sometimes host Inky... and I apparently get her confused with one of the other Pacman ghosts. The title of this episode doesn't really relate to the discussion other than it was a hilarious line that slipped out there somewhere along the way. This week folks played a lot of Stellaris in both single and multiplayer configurations. We delve into this game and its relation to other 4X games, and why this one clicks for some better than the normal fare. We take a whirlwind trip through Fallout 4 and The Sims, before discussing Twitch Streaming. I talk for a bit about my revised experiences with the new Doom reboot, and why I consider it far better than my early multiplayer experiences. Grace talks about her return to Final Fantasy XIV and how much she loves healing butts. This kicks off a conversation about MMOs and Raiding and winds up with Inky and I pining for Hellgate London again. Finally we wrap things up with a discussion about Uncharted and the whole "cinematic game" trend of the 2000s.

This evening Ash, Bel, Grace, Kodra, Tam and Thalen talked about a whole bunch of topics... but the largest amount of that time was devoted to Overwatch. Over the last week a bunch of us have played the game and we had commentary on it. Mostly several of us enjoy the game that is... but mourn the game that could have been with Titan. We also talk about looter shooters in general and the problems The Division has been having with both rampant cheating, and bad loot design. We spend quite a bit of time talking about Diablo 3 Season 6 and the rush that Grace and Belghast have been participating in. Tam spent some time playing Always Sometimes Monsters, which lead into a conversation about the Steam Suggestion Queue. Kodra has been playing Elite Dangerous again, which brings up a discussion of Eve Online. Thalen has recently started the Stick of Truth, and we get into a discussion about the arrival of Ryzom on Steam. This spawns a lengthy conversation about dead MMOs and the sequence in which we played various games. Somewhere in there we also had a bit of a conversation about the Marvel Comics Universe. This is one of the most rambling episodes we have recorded... but also the most true to our real life conversations.

This week we discuss the April 2016 AggroChat Game of the Month title... Gone Home. This was a pick by Grace, and honestly one that probably a handful of us would have never played. However it also holds the special designation as being one of the few Game Club titles that we all universally liked. We talk about the design of the game, and the narrative, as well as the context. This game is the quintessential 90s game. It is set in 1994, the year Belghast graduated from High School and with Grace and Thalen not being far behind that also. For us it was this trip down memory lane that added so much to the experience. In any case, as is always the case if you have not played Gone Home and intend to... spoilers are plentiful.